We're Bad, and that's Good

Let's not get our hamartiology from Serenity.

I recently watched Joss Whedon’s (soon to be cult classic) Serenity.  I suggest you run out right now and rent this movie.  I suggest this for two reasons: First, it’s a fun, provocative movie (though disturbing at times – this is not a good flick for kids).  Second, I’m going to ruin vast parts of it for you if you read any further than this summary.  Aside from just being a rather interesting movie, it takes on the topic of sin and handles it in an interesting way.  So, watch the movie and then come back to read and interact with this post…

Our hero, Malcomb Reynolds (shortened to Mal by his friends – think malcontent, malevolent, malpractice…), is a wandering captain/mercenary/criminal harkening back to Han Solo.  He takes River, a Reader (psychic etc) and genetically manufactured killing machine, into his custody.  At this point he does not realize how badly she is wanted by the Alliance for her abilities.  Learning of her sordid past, he protects her in an attempt to assuage his guilt over having killed a man.  This care intensifies over time after his meeting with the Shepherd who urges him to believe in something.  By the way, this Pastoral figure happens to live in Haven (just one letter off…).  Mal, having left the safe Haven has a run-in with the Operative, an assassin who makes no bones about using evil to accomplish good.  When he escapes the assassin, he returns to Haven only to find it has come under a brutal assault by the Alliance.  As the Shepherd is dying he has this exchange with Mal:

Shepherd – (nodding toward a burning Alliance ship) I shot him down.  I killed the ship that killed us…not very Christian of me.

Mal – You did what was right.

Thus, the one seemingly holy man in the whole film ends his life with an act of what he considers sin.  After a bit more of the death scene, the Shepherd grabs Mal with what little strength he has and utters his last words, “I don’t care what you believe.  Just believe it.”  These words will drive Mal on to the very end of his journey.

In a quest to understand their enemy and find a way to defeat him, they strap the dead bodies of their friends to the exterior of their ship and make their way to Miranda, a planet from which no one has heard anything for years.  It is assumed that the terraforming to make it inhabitable didn’t take.  It is orbited by ships full of Reavers, cannibalistic humanoid monsters that wreck havoc on those living on the nearby planets.  The need for transforming their ship into an abomination (their word, not mine), is to fit in with the Reavers, so they will let them through.  I can hear it now…“All the other kids are putting dead bodies on their ships….”  What they find on the planet is millions of dead people all in poses of normal life.  The whole planet died from some mysterious cause.  A beacon leads them to a holograph describing the end of life there.  The Alliance, of whom the assassin is an agent, introduced a chemical (Pax) into the air meant to sedate the population so as to eliminate crime and violence.  The problem was, it made them so sedate that they gave up eating and drinking and died where they sat.  Or at least this was the fate of the lucky 90% of the planet.  The other 10% were driven mad by it and became the Reavers, dismembering and eating their fellow man.  How’s that for Utopia?

In the end, Mal cleverly brings together the Reavers and the army of the Alliance.  As the evil and the really evil (who are pursuing said utopia) fight it out, Mal leaves his friends and heads off to the typical inner workings of a technological hideout to vanquish evil by disseminating the hidden knowledge to the masses.  There he has a confrontation with the assassin who asks him if he believes he is supposed to release that information.  “I do,” he says.  Next question, is he willing to die for that belief?  “I am,” comes the response.  (Perhaps we should write that, “I Am.”)  With this conviction developed, our hero has arrived on his spiritual journey.  The content of his belief is immaterial.  All that matters is the fact that he’s finally believing in something, namely that we’re bad and that’s good.  In the midst of a ferocious struggle, the operative asks him, “Do you know what your sin is, Mal?”  Mal answers, “Hell*, I’m a fan of all seven.  But right now I’m gonna go with wrath.” When he seems beaten, he suddenly subdues the machiavellian assassin and forces him to watch the holograph’s explanation of the destruction of the silent planet.  As he binds him he says, “I’m not going to kill you.  Hell, I’m gonna grant you your greatest wish.  I’m gonna show you a world without sin.”  When he returns to his friends they ask if he’s accomplished his goal.  Beaten and battered he utters, “It’s done.”

The message is this: We are meant to be corrupt.  It is normal, and we might just as well embrace it.  To attempt to achieve holiness is senseless and the concept of a millennial kingdom is impossible, and if attempted, would explain the rebellion at its end by those driven mad.  Though Joss totally blows it on the issue of corruption being preferable to wholeness and holiness, he does get one major thing right with the Reavers.  Holiness cannot be imposed externally and be expected to bring true inner peace.  An exclusively external holiness that is mandated by law and is enforced by penalty will allow evil to fester in the heart and explode in madness or in hypocrisy.  On a small scale, perhaps we saw this with the Jewish leadership of Jesus’ day.  Thank God this is not our final state.  God will work true serenity in us through the Holy Spirit via the imputation of his law (which I would suggest is his character) in our hearts.  Jeremiah describes this to some degree in Jeremiah 31:31-34.  My thanks go out to Joss for giving us an enjoyable and provocative film, but “thanks be to God for his indescribable gift,” who has proven Joss dead wrong.

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